


Inside the Flamingo

by whiskeyandspite



Category: Blood and Chocolate (2007), Hannibal (TV), The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman
Genre: Clothed Sex, Coercion, Dirty Sex, Forced Eye Contact, M/M, Obsession, Possessiveness, Rough Sex, Stalking, mild dub-con, some serious endurance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:27:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s been two months since he’d seen the way the young man would smile as he turned, part his lips to take a breath in the most fetching way. He has a delicious body, one Nigel imagined often, pulled taut and shaking with pleasure under his hands, and he had spent much longer than two months studying him from afar to get a taste for him.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Before Aiden gets to Bucharest, he works anywhere he can. Any job he can. He finds a job as a waiter at the Flamingo, a strip club that caters to the elite, and catches the attention of very possessive, very dangerous Nigel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haanigram](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haanigram/gifts).



> BLAME [BREA](http://hannigram.com/) FOR THIS. Honestly, she comes up with the randomest ships and I get brain boners and write em for her.

He only stays as long as Aiden’s on shift. Once he leaves – the flurry of attention and cat calls following – Nigel vacates his table, leaves a very generous tip, and goes outside.

It’s been two months since he’d seen the way the young man would smile as he turned, part his lips to take a breath in the most fetching way. He has a delicious body, one Nigel imagined often, pulled taut and shaking with pleasure under his hands, and he had spent much longer than two months studying him from afar to get a taste for him.

He lights a cigarette and waits, just far enough out of the light of the streetlamp behind the back door to not be seen when people leave it. He knows Aiden isn’t long in doing so, he knows the route he takes home, has followed him the car a few times, inconspicuously enough for Aiden not to notice. He has yet to offer a ride. Although the weather is crawling its way to winter and he doubts Aiden owns anything warmer than the thick heavy coat he occasionally wears, a bulky thing, obscuring him completely into a mass shadow of nothing.

How Nigel wants to take care of him. bring him home, feed him up and fuck him, slow, deep enough to make the boy whimper, hand in his hair and bending him in a beautiful arc off the sheets.

He licks his bottom lip and drags his teeth over it before swallowing, eyes still on the door, nicotine burning his lungs on the inhale, soothed and poisonous as he breathes the remains of it away.

It’s only minutes later that the heavy thing swings open, a cloud of warm exhaled air heralding Aiden’s exit. He stands a moment, hands in his pockets, eyes closed as he mentally runs through the checks he does nightly. Phone, back pocket, wallet, front left, keys, front right, the evening’s tips – the wad thick again, with the generous tips from his favourite patron – in the pocket of his coat.

With that he turns to go, moving his head left and right to check the street before stepping out on it, oblivious of the figure just behind the streetlamp, off on the footpath opposite to where he’s going. Nigel watches. Lets the cigarette burn low before flipping it away, a stark ember in the night before it hits the gutter with a quiet hiss and darkens.

Most evenings it takes Aiden half an hour to walk home. Forty minutes in rain, twenty at a run. Tonight it’s just cold, and his legs ache from a 10-hour shift waiting tables, jaw aches from smiling the entire time. He sells himself just as fully as the girls who dance; his emotional labor costs him more than he allows himself to think, so he doesn’t think on it. he knows, at least, that his father can’t find him here. And for as long as it takes, he will work at the club and collect and save, and work on his graphic novel.

The mantra keeps him returning to work, six day weeks, over and over.

Dad can’t find me. dad can’t get me. I’m ok. I’m ok. I’m ok.

He times it to the beat of his boots against the pavement. Behind him, he hears an engine start and the car pull away.

He makes it perhaps four blocks before he sees them, the slow meandering pace of a bored gang just waiting for a victim. Aiden swallows, buries his hands deeper in his pockets and forces his heart to slow. Victims become victims by projecting a certain aura. Aiden has no strength left to outrun them or fight them, is too tired to turn down the next street and take the long way home, through the park.

He slows his pace, considers, feels the money slide sticky against his fingers in his pocket. It’s a lot of money, perhaps enough for rent and some food if he budgeted properly. And they would take it – and everything else – for spite and boredom.

It’s a split second between Aiden stopping and the leader seeing him. and it’s that second where adrenaline slips cold through his veins, a sickening familiar feeling, the second he finds himself stepping back half a step, up just on his toes to sprint, push past and keep the hell going for as long as his exhausted legs will carry him, for as long as the adrenaline lasts.

The second where a shiny black SUV pulls up right next to him, smooth as oil, and the window rolls down.

“Get in.”

The group of men ahead on the next corner were loud enough to pass through even the thick windows of Nigel’s car before he’d wound the window down, and he could tell with the way they rearranged themselves, shifted, turned their attention to Aiden, alone, on the sidewalk, that they had every intention of sending him home bloody.

He couldn’t stand for it.

He waits, for the initial flight response to settle, for Aiden to blink at him, recognition to slip into his expression before a sharp yell from the gang on the next street draws his attention and recognition bleeds into fear.

He gets in quickly, closes the door and closes his eyes, waiting until the car is in motion and past the yelled profanities before sighing out a breath and reaching for his seatbelt.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, turning to his rescuer, to the man responsible for most of the money in his pocket. Nigel just turns his head enough to check the rear view mirror before returning his eyes to the road.

“It’s a dangerous route you take, Aiden.”

“It’s safer than the park.”

Aiden gets a brief glance at that and shrugs his shoulders higher, ducking his head between.

“You can just drop me on the next street,” he assures him, “I can walk the rest of the way, it’s not far.”

Nigel merely slides his hands over the steering wheel. He doesn’t want to drug Aiden into this, to coerce. He wants Aiden to come to him on his own, take what Nigel is offering, grow to love it enough to beg for it himself. That’s what he wants, the reason he shows up at the club over and over, to watch the young waiter bend pleasingly over a table to retrieve drinks, or pass them out, to watch him flirt and realize, night after night, that Nigel wants him for himself. Wants no one else to touch him.

He would teach him well enough, when he had him, what any indiscretion meant. Not cruelly, he never wants his Aiden to hurt, but he will need him to understand, to know who he belongs to, who will make him cry with how good fucking him will be. He has to have him.

They pass the street Aiden usually turns on to head home and the young man follows it with his eyes, head turning back in a terrified longing, before turning to face the front again. He swallows.

“If you’re gonna kill me anyway, can I at least know your name?” he asks quietly.

“You don’t remember my name?” Nigel replies, the corner of his mouth Aiden can’t see turned up in amusement. He should remember. He had told him.

Aiden frowns, studying the man next to him from under his messy fringe. He’s seen him before, but he has seen countless others. Some mad drunk and grabby, already turned on by the girls and boys on stage and taking it out on the nearest warm body, others still coherent, trying their luck with the waitstaff. And then people like this man, he had always been quiet, always reserved, but he would watch, and his eyes would undress Aiden every time he was nearby in such a way as to suggest expensive fabric sliding over his skin slow enough for him to scream, rather than quick and rough and messy.

After the first few times, Aiden had started reciprocating; small looks at first, then a smile, then grins. Then he’d make sure to clean the tables nearest him in such a way as to be almost obscene, if he wasn’t in a strip club earning his keep without getting on his knees in one of the back private rooms. Leaning far over, arching his back, stretching his body in the most pleasing ways as those eyes paused in their systematic undressing and started caressing him instead.

“I don’t remember,” he lies, feeling his cheeks heat up. 

He remembers. He remembers setting down a set of drinks, feeling the familiar hot stroke of the look the man had aimed at him as he straightened. He remembers watching his lips press a little harder around the cigarette in his mouth before he pulled it away, a sliver of blue smoke following before he exhaled the rest. It had been a busy night, and Aiden was riding high on exhaustion and the confidence that came with being watched more intently than any of the performers on stage. So he had walked over.

“What can I get you?” he’d asked, smirk sitting pretty on his lips as he’d tilted his head and cocked his hips enough to notice the motion. The man had raised his eyes, returning the cigarette to his mouth and exhaling again, tongue pressing against one of the sharp canine teeth Aiden could see in the dimmed blue lights of the club as he pulled it away.

“What do you think I want?” had come the reply, slow, carefully accented. Not the sluggish slur of the drunks who came here to get off, not the stammer of the nervous first-timers, but a delicious voice, smooth and warm just as his looks. And Aiden supposes that for a spur of the moment decision, shifting to slide into the man’s lap and taking his cigarette out of his hand, he could have made a worse one.

“I’m not for sale.” He’d purred back, licking his lips before taking a long drag. The smoke had tasted odd, flavourful and rich, and he’d let out the exhale in a slow long stream turned profile, the lights of the stage backing the smoke and his silhouette before turning his head just a little, just enough to catch the heat in the gaze. The man’s eyes had gone near-black under the lights in the club, and with something far more sinister.

“Perhaps a name then.” And he hadn’t moved to touch him, hadn’t moved to grope or tug, even as Aiden turned, deliberately rubbing against him with his thigh and gently returned the cigarette to the man’s mouth, his own lips parted as he mirrored the gesture the man’s made as they took the offering.

“A name for a name.”

And those dark eyes again, the smile growing slow and turning the chiselled face into something extremely, painfully attractive. The hand had come up, from behind Aiden, brushing his back with the inside of his wrist, and the cigarette was gone again.

“Nigel.” And Aiden had grinned, plucked the cigarette away once more and stood. He’d given his in turn and then the night had continued. It had taken him days to get the rich aromatic taste from his mouth.

“Liar.” Nigel’s voice brings him back to the present and Aiden’s eyes focus once more. He doesn’t say a word, not to deny or apologise, and Nigel doesn’t push for more.

After a moment, Aiden sits straighter and pulls his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and setting his chin on top. He watches the street ahead and doesn’t ask where they’re going, has a fairly decent idea of where and doesn’t fight it. why bother?

He was in the pink nylons today, not a color he particularly enjoyed but work was work. His only pair of walking boots rested dirty and loose up to his shins, laces tattered at the ends, one plaited to a tapered end. He kept his work shoes at work. They were the nicest things he owned.

The silence in the car isn’t uncomfortable but it is charged. Nigel lets it slide that the boots are going to leave dirt on the leather seats. He forgives in advance that they would leave residual dust on his shoulders when he pushes Aiden’s legs over them later this evening, his ridiculous uniform still on. He watches him from the corner of his eye and lets the silence rest.

“I did tell you I’m not for sale,” Aiden tries, quiet, as the car slides from the darker neighbourhoods to the affluent ones and Aiden feels the nerves and unused adrenaline grip his throat with nauseating worry. Nigel allows his smile to spread over his face, wide and smooth, not unlike the one he had levelled on Aiden in the club.

“I haven’t bought you.”

Aiden’s eyes flick up at the words but he doesn’t turn his head.

“Your tips would suggest otherwise.”

“I tip for services rendered.” He answers honestly. Aiden’s brows furrow and his jaw works, and for a moment longer he is silent.

“I doubt I’ve done enough for what you tip me.”

Nigel blinks, tilts his head up in lieu of smiling wider.

“If you seek to repay a debt, I will not be one to stop you.”

When Aiden laughs, it’s a nervous sound, a helpless one. This entire evening is his choice, and his alone. He had gotten into the car instead of running, had accepted every tip without question, had flirted, shamelessly, frequently with the man until the burning eyes following his every movement around the club became his constant comfort.

And now he was here, going home with a man he knows he can’t deny without severe consequences. He doesn’t even know what neighbourhood he’s in anymore to just up and run home. The panic seeps through his veins, tightens his muscles, causes his fingers to press hard against the stretchy material over his legs.

Nigel watches, blinks slowly, relishes in the fear that is radiating off the young man like heat. His sweet, precious boy. He wonders what sounds he can coax from those lips, how far he can push him and how hard before he bends, begs beautifully and lets him in.

He pulls into the carpark slowly, guiding his car to the space assigned him for the building and kills the engine. Next to him, Aiden nearly vibrates with the need to move, get out, get away. Nigel hopes, truly hopes, for his sake that he has the brains enough not to try and run. He doesn’t want to scare Aiden, but if he has to drag him to his apartment by that gorgeous mop of hair he won’t think twice. He gives the young man a cursory glance before turning to open his own door.

“Come.” He commands, exits the vehicle, and waits for it to be followed.

It takes a moment, long enough for Aiden to take a deep breath before sliding his feet to the floor of the car, unclip his seatbelt and get out. He watches the headlights flicker against the wall as Nigel locks the car, and forces himself to follow when he holds the door open for him. They take the three steps up needed to get to the elevators and wait, Aiden's hands in his pockets, Nigel's in front of him as he looks up at the numbers slowly flipping down, lower and lower until they reach the carpark level. The doors slide open and then step inside.

Despite Aiden's assumptions, Nigel does not instantly touch him. Aiden swallows and presses himself into the corner of the lift, just waiting as it takes them to what seems to be the top floor of the entire complex. He has no idea what to think of Nigel. He has heard rumours, but without a surname can never follow them up. He knows he is a rich man, can feel that he is a dangerous one, and yet beyond being painfully self-confident in Aiden's choice not to run from him, he has done nothing more than drive the young man to his house. Even at the club there had never been unnecessary grabbing, abuse or violence. Just the stare, the hot, delicious look that Aiden nearly shivers at the memory of.

Nigel notices, doesn't say a word. The anticipation is what's winding Aiden so high and it's beautiful to watch. He wonders if he'll need to even push before the boy goes on his own. He wants nothing more than to push him back against the corner he'd chosen, yank him up so his feet rested, spread, against the cool metal handrails that ran the border of the lift, and show him the meaning of anticipation. The mental image is certainly a pleasing one, he'll perhaps act upon it once he has the boy trained to his hand. It amuses him that he knows it will take a long time; Aiden isn't an easy victory. He fights suppression and control as hard as Nigel seeks to enforce it. It will be a beautiful collision.

On the 23rd floor, the doors hiss open and Nigel steps out first, confident that Aiden will follow. He has measures set up if he runs, of course. He'll let him get as far as he can on his own before driving out to meet him, be sitting in his dirty, tiny apartment for when he comes home, sure of the flimsy door's security. He smiles when he hears the drag of boots against the carpet behind him, and unlocks the door with brisk, practiced movements. This time, he lets Aiden in first.

The apartment is heavy in dark colors and antique furniture. Everything is pristine, and Aiden stops on reflex to push his shoes off with his toes, without bending. It's perhaps the gesture Nigel wanted, because he closes the door with a snap and locks it, before passing Aiden on his way into the apartment proper. He turns on few lights, preferring to allow the lights of the city to light the floor enough for them to see. Aiden supposes he could be raped in a worse location, but stops the thought with the single thought that he has agreed to every part of this, has followed along without coercion. He could have run, closed the elevator doors and attempted to make a break, but he hadn't, he'd waited before they started to close before leaving to join Nigel, he'd entered the apartment first.

Carefully he transfers his keys, phone and wallet into his coat pockets and takes that off too. He'd thrown on an over-long shirt before tugging on his only sweater and jacket. At the club he worked shirtless, in nothing but the ridiculous tights and the thin, stretch shorts that went on top. He hates it, but has his body in shape enough to not look overly repulsive. Regardless, he feels naked now, with nothing but two layers of fabric between his vulnerability and Nigel's attentions.

Nigel's eyes shift over the young man in front of him, watches his nervous movement, his resignation to the situation. It wouldn't do, he wants him willing. He wants Aiden pressing against him with breathless, quiet little whimpers, desperate in his need. It could take time, though, that he will allow. But he will have the boy in his bed tonight if he has to tie him down to keep him there. He doesn't offer Aiden a drink, doesn't offer dinner, just steps closer again, and lets him back up until Aiden's back hits the wall and he swallows, eyes up but chin down, defensive and scared.

He hooks one finger gently under Aiden's chin and raises it until he can meet Aiden's eyes properly; so wide and blue and worried. He is a remarkably beautiful boy, Ganymede in a dirty city, dressed in the only things he can afford, looking next to broken by his own circumstances. How he wants to take care of him, to own him and have the boy as his; to play with and pamper and punish. And he would punish him, often, for the way he attracted all the wrong sort of attention, the way he would be obstinate and defiant, how he would make Nigel expend effort to tame him to his hand. The thought alone makes him lick his lips lightly, eyes on Aiden's as they flick down at the motion before closing slowly, jaw working in Nigel's grip.

"Aiden," his voice is low, quiet, appropriate for the hush of the apartment, and serves to placate the younger man enough for him to swallow and open his eyes, glance directed down for the moment, those beautiful long lashes fanning out over his cheeks. "Look at me."

And he does, slowly, reluctantly, but he obeys, and his expression is one of wonder and vulnerability rather than hatred or distaste. Nigel nearly moans.

"How many people have touched you?" he asks instead. Aiden's brows furrow a moment, first in confusion then annoyance. His cheeks darken just a little and he blinks. He doesn't reply, doesn't open his lips or lick them, makes no indication that he's going to acquiesce to this request as quickly as he had to the other. And after a moment more he directs his eyes away, swallowing thickly, face darkening more. Nigel's hand slides from his chin to grip Aiden's hair and he tugs just enough to get the boy's attention, to have his eyes on him again, and Aiden makes a sound that goes straight to his cock, a sweet, quiet little whine. his pupils are wider and Nigel has to close his eyes before he does something he'll regret.

A little masochist. Oh, he couldn't be this lucky.

The grip on Aiden's hair tightens to painful and he makes another sound to indicate. It doesn't ease, Nigel stays still a moment, eyes still closed, before parting his lips on a slow breath. It smells of mint, and just a hint of nicotine underlying it. A cool smell, but not a clinical one. And Aiden wonders if he's angered him, if he should have replied that he had had experience enough with women but never here, and never like this. Maybe told him that Nigel had been the first and only man to so far get such a response from him. But perhaps that would be a bad idea, would bring out the worst in the person currently holding him behind closed doors in an apartment Aiden is sure is sound proof.

He takes a shallow breath.

"You can touch me," it's not permission, perhaps, so much as a reminder, and it draws a very amused sound from Nigel before he leans closer, fingers slackening the painful grip, and nuzzles against him gently. Aiden lets out a shaky breath and blinks quickly, eyes up at the ceiling for the moment. 

Nigel lets his hands slide down Aiden's neck, lower, over the thin sweater and shirt beneath, skirts his hips for the time being and turns them to slide up against the warm skin, his hands just that touch colder to send Aiden shivering before he relaxes. He turns his head to draw dry lips over Aiden's throat and the other sighs, eyes closing again as he swallows. It's unexpected, this gentleness, and it worries him. Gentleness melds into cruelty too quickly, the line is very thin. He wonders if Nigel will hurt him, if he'll have bruises on his skin for the shift tomorrow, if he'll have to beg and plead with some of the girls back stage to help him cover them in make up.

He's about to ask, desperate and nervous enough to, when Nigel leans back enough to push their mouths together and Aiden just hums quietly and opens his mouth to it.

It's not unpleasant, but it's not something Aiden thinks he'd actively seek out. He can feel the very beginnings of stubble against his face as Nigel kisses him, bring up one hand to splay over his cheek, fingertips brushing his hair, thumb along the line of his jaw. He doesn't move to bring his hands up in turn, doesn't hold on or push away, he just endures it, worried that if he pushes one way or another, whatever gentle dynamic they have will twist.

When they part, he's breathless, and Nigel just watches him, sees the blush stay on his cheek, the way his eyes have grown brighter, darker, how his pupils have widened...

"You beautiful, beautiful boy." he tells him, and for a moment he wants to keep him as is, innocent and untouched and blushing with anticipation as he is now. When he kisses him again it's not as gentle, it's devouring, tongue insistent and teeth present in harsh nips against Aiden until he reciprocates, pushes back, offers something more than pliant resignation.

Aiden's heart hammers, as much from lack of air as with how quickly this is escalating and to what. It's not cruel, but it is urgent, and he would be blind to not feel how hard Nigel is, for him, as he presses Aiden harsher against the wall and pins him there, chest to knees. In its own way, it is ridiculously stimulating, knowing that just standing there, just being himself, exhausted and inexperienced as he was, he had gotten someone so hard. And at the same time it's frightening, because he knows where this will lead, what it will mean for him... he suddenly very much wants to go home, to pretend this happened and ended here, that he was allowed to leave through the door quietly.

Nigel rolls his hips down and Aiden knows it won't happen, feels himself surrender to this as much as he can before he hits the wall of nauseating fear that grips him and struggles from the kiss until he can turn away, panting quietly. Nigel just returns to drawing his lips - wet now, leaving cool trails as he breathes through his nose against them - over Aiden's throat. He can be patient. For a few more moments he can be patient before he turns Aiden against the wall and fucks him.

Perhaps he can be patient longer, just enough to throw him on the bed before he starts.

Aiden makes a sound of protest and Nigel drops the hand against his back down to rub between his legs, insistent and slow, enough to set Aiden's breath to hitch, to have his voice escape him on a quiet sound he tries to bite back. He pulls away enough to see him and lets his eyes slide to being only half open as he watches. The blush darkens, lips already rough kissed between teeth as though that tiny gesture will help keep the sounds at bay. It does nothing more than pull a growl from Nigel's throat, and he tugs the lip free with his thumb before tilting Aiden's head back up to kiss him again.

It's overwhelming, dizzying, and undeniably good. If Aiden could lie - and he can, even under duress, he had learned - his body can't, and he doesn't want to know the level of hell he would face if he tried. So he shifts, pushes his hips against the palm there, moans quietly as the kiss gets more urgent, sloppier, filled with biting more than gentle reassurance.

And it fuels Nigel to push harder, to pull back to breathe against Aiden's lips, watch as they part wider, watch as he slowly takes the boy to a place where his resistance wears thinner and weaker, to the point where he starts to push forward, hands finally coming up to clasp Nigel's lapels to hold on, eyes still down, still near-closed, but no matter. He'll have the boy meet them soon enough, and learn to love it. Meet his own, in fact, in the mirror, watch his face as Nigel takes him apart.

But later.

All later. Right now he needs to feel Aiden writhe under him, twist and push and inadvertently get himself closer, needy, desperate for it. He smiles.

"So obedient when you want to be, hmm?" he breathes, just watching Aiden try to get himself to neutral again, to meet his eyes properly and pretend this wasn't gently plucking him apart. He slides his hand against his harder, splaying his fingers around his cock that grows steadily harder with the friction and intent. Aiden makes another breathless sound and Nigel watches him.

"Say my name," he murmurs, watching Aiden blink himself from his bliss for a moment, try to regain his senses. Nigel stops moving his hand, Aiden's brows draw together and he arches, seeking the feeling again. "My name, Aiden, you remember it." he rests both hands on either side of Aiden's head, against the wall so Aiden can't cheat himself pleasure until he complies, until Nigel can hear his name whispered, whimpered, whined by the man in front of him.

It takes a moment for Aiden’s mind to catch up, to get on track with what was being asked and what it all meant.

“Nigel,” he says, and it’s breathless and a little unsteady, and the other sighs, lips turning up at the corners just a little. Like that. He wants no other name to sound like that on his lips.

“Again,”

Aiden swallows, tilting his head up when Nigel leans in again, tongue pressed against the pulse point at his neck.

“Nigel,” he repeats, suppressing a quiet moan when he feels teeth brush his skin, “Your name is Nigel.”

And that’s enough for the press of teeth, for Aiden to buck up against it both in a need to get more, and in a need to get away. He can’t come to work with bruises sucked into his skin and he’s fairly sure that by the morning he will have them everywhere. He struggles just enough for Nigel to draw his hands down, hook them under his thighs and hoist Aiden up, the unexpected loss of balance pushing the younger man closer before he just presses him up against the wall, teeth still against his throat and rolls his hips up.

Aiden’s heavy enough to feel, but not enough for it to matter. Nigel rubs their cocks together until Aiden’s twisting in his hands, making the most beautiful, sweet sounds against him. he’s almost tempted to bring the boy over like this, just to feel him come apart in his hands, to feel the wetness seep between his legs and the blush of humiliation that would inevitably follow. The thought drives a quiet growl from him, his hands tighten around the boy’s thighs and he pulls back from the wall to carry Aiden with him to where he wants him.

Aiden’s trembling by the time he lands in bed with Nigel’s weight on top of him. it’s too real now, no way to pretend that he can get out of this with negotiation. It frightens him because as hard as one part of him wants to escape, to push past, struggle, scream and hope someone hears, another part wants to stay, wants to see if he can adapt to this arrangement, if the initial pain and discomfort could be worth it in the long run.

He finds Nigel pleasing to look at but that’s as far as the attraction goes. He terrifies him. with his obsession and his need for control; he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to deal with his life being scheduled to suit the man’s fancy, he had escaped his father’s similar control with his life, just barely, he doesn’t need to fall into the same trap now.

He lifts his arms as his shirt and sweater are yanked over his head and discarded, sits up enough to bring his hands forward to undress Nigel in turn, concentrating on the buttons in front of him, the systematic undoing, over and over to calm his nerves. He allows himself, for the moment, to surrender. To take this as it comes. To moan when Nigel kisses him again, to spread his legs when the other indicates he should. The submission itself isn’t what’s difficult for Aiden, it’s the idea that it could be permanent.

And he looks so good undone, face so expressive, pupils blown, cheeks flushed… and the sounds he makes. The little moans, the needy whines as he draws one hand down Nigel’s arm, guides his hand between his legs again. he doesn’t let him, tugs Aiden’s arms up above his head and kisses him into pliancy.

“Stay still,” he murmurs, smirk tilting his lips. Under him, Aiden makes a discontented sound.

“No,”

And it sounds so petulant, so childish, from anyone else would be unforgiveable but from Aiden it sounds delicious. So he lets is slide. For now. Brings his hands down to tug at the ridiculous shorts the boy is wearing, pushing Aiden down with one hand splayed on his chest when he tries to move. They slide off easy enough, leaving Aiden prone in just the nylons and underwear, already shifting impatiently for Nigel to touch him again.

Aiden’s hips feel small in Nigel’s hands, he can feel the bones jut out against his palm, thinks again how he wants to feed him, dress him beautifully and keep him, and then he turns him in one quick motion and tugs him back so Aiden’s sprawled in bed, hips held up.

For a moment, Aiden stops moving entirely, eyes wide with one realization and multiple horror scenarios running through his mind. he feels Nigel run his hand down his back and lower, middle finger pressing down against the crack of his ass for Aiden to feel it. he pushes back against the sensation, when the fingers slip lower and press against his perineum and then down further behind his balls. It feels good enough to draw another sound from him before Nigel leans closer to press his teeth in one sharp, warning bite against one cheek.

“Stay still.” He repeats.

He leans the length of Aiden’s body to reach for the top drawer in the bedside table, tugging it open to get what he needs before returning to kneel behind the young man splayed for him. there’s something so fetching about him being half dressed, something possessive about knowing Nigel can control how much he removes and what stays on. So he doesn’t undress him further, just takes the stretchy fabric between his fingers and tugs until it rips.

Aiden shifts forward and feels Nigel press a hand against his cock again, cupping him and pulling him back.

“Aiden.” It’s a warning, barely veiled, and Aiden stays still, spreading his legs that little bit further and pushing down. For a while, Nigel lets him, relishes in the way Aiden works himself against his hand, rolling his hips in slow, pleasing waves over and over, turning just enough to change the angle occasionally, to draw a low needy noise from him. then he takes his hand away, sits back – disregarding the pleading whimper that Aiden makes – and insinuates his hand into the tear he’d made, pushing Aiden’s briefs aside to rub his thumb against his hole.

It’s an unusual sensation and Aiden tenses, feels his body respond without his express permission to, after a moment pushing back against that touch as he had forward against the other. He bites his lip when he feels the cool slide of lube against his skin and endures the initial penetration. For all Nigel’s impatience, he is gentle in preparing him, allows Aiden to get used to the sensation of one before adding another, eases the harshness of Aiden’s hiss at three by curling them and seeking the spot he knows will bring the boy to whimpering.

He doesn’t disappoint.

The feeling is incredible, sharp and electric and sending Aiden’s entire body to bend, just to get more. He brings one hand down to press against his cock for the friction, slowly working himself closer and closer until Nigel takes that away from him, curls his hand behind his back and holds it down as he leans to whisper, “You will get off on my cock or not at all.”

Aiden’s brows draw together but he manages a nod, lip between his teeth as the thrilling sensation runs up and down his spine until Nigel deems him ready and Aiden hears the sound of a fly being drawn down, the tearing of a plastic packet. He can feel the way Nigel’s hand flexes against his wrist as he works himself one-handed, hears the way his breath catches at the feeling, and then he’s pressing against him and Aiden tenses.

The breach isn’t painful so much as simply uncomfortable, and the way Aiden’s bent doesn’t allow him much movement to adjust. Nigel pushes slowly, taking Aiden’s hand to press it against the bed by his face, curling his fingers through Aiden’s and pressing down as he leans over him, warm breath against Aiden’s cool back.

He starts a slow rhythm, patient enough to not hurt his boy until the other arches into him, pushes back. Nigel can do kindness, is caring when he wants to be, cares for his things meticulously. He supposes he’ll treat the boy gently more than he will treat him rough. He has faith Aiden will get himself into enough trouble to warrant punishment often, enough to keep both sides of Nigel’s personality satisfied.

Once the initial burn passes, Aiden finds himself pressing back, lips parted on quick breaths and occasional sounds as the pace drives him slowly closer. It’s when Nigel sits up, lets go of his hand, and yanks him back into the next thrust that he makes a helpless noise. Whatever spot Nigel had found in him with his fingers feels painfully more sensitive when fucked against, and Aiden surrenders.

Nigel wishes he could keep him like this forever, shifting back against him, writhing and pressing himself closer to the bed, over and over as the sensations drive first whimpers, then sobs from him. he’s beautiful, completely gone and willing, begging for more with his body and sounds. He manages a word, just one, and Nigel curses, leaning down to bite just the top of Aiden’s spine as he comes, feeling Aiden tremble with the promise of following close behind. he lets him, brings a hand down to rub him through his underwear until Aiden stills, muscles tensed and body trembling and he can feel the sticky warm wetness against his palm.

Aiden’s aware of Nigel pulling out, knows he makes a faint sound of pain when he does, muscles sore and body completely exhausted as he lies heavy against the sheets and pants. It had felt good, embarrassingly so, and he bites his lip on a small smile. He can get used to this arrangement, if that is the most that is required of him, he can do it. he can come to the man’s bed, spread his legs and enjoy himself, please him. long enough for his finances to settle, long enough for Aiden to be able to get out.

And then he’d leave.

He undresses when Nigel prompts him to, follows the man to the bathroom to clean up with a warm soft cloth. Returns the sloppy kisses and gentle touches, presses close against the man’s chest and nuzzles him. he doesn’t say a word when Nigel tells him not to go to work the next day. He follows him to bed and curls up in his arms, content for the moment to be controlled if it leads to good food and warm sheets and safety.

Nigel sleeps after Aiden does, after he feels his muscles relax and his breathing even to gentle puffs of warm air against his chest. He strokes the hair from his face, smiles at how young Aiden looks in rest, when he doesn’t have the petulant expression, the hard eyes, the nervous gestures. He’s not a stupid boy, just as Nigel isn’t a stupid man. He’d felt the shift in Aiden when he’d chosen to accept this, had seen the way he moved, begged, went to his hand willingly.

He knows he’ll aim to leave. It would take time, but he’d aim to. And Nigel has no intention of letting him go.

When they wake the next day, it’s a struggle; Aiden demanding to go to work, bargaining that Nigel would see him there, that he could pick him up that evening and bring him back and fuck him in the shower. Nigel lets him go, after drawing his voice so loud on helpless keens that Aiden is shaking, legs like water as Nigel’s clever fingers work. He lets him go.

Until the evening.

Until he can pull him close, draw his hand down the soft skin of his inner thigh and remind him who he now belongs to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"You smell like green anise." Nigel murmurs, lips moving over Aiden's skin as the other arches a little into it. He hums the affirmative, he had just taken two shots of the vile stuff. He feels the hand against his thigh move higher and trembles, anticipating._
> 
> _"And someone else's hands all over you."_
> 
> Because I said there would be a second chapter ~~god help me~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to point out that this is seriously a FUCKED UP and really TOXIC relationship. Like, it is not nice. And it won't get better. There may perhaps be more chapters but don't expect a happy ending to this, they're too dangerously different for one.
> 
> Nigel frightens me, I love him.

It's past 2am now, the club has hit its busiest time on a Friday evening - morning, now - and Aiden is off his feet running drinks to and from tables. He's long since abandoned the idea of seeing Nigel here, expecting that once his shift has ended he will find the familiar plume of smoke under the familiar streetlamp waiting for him to take him home. He has the day off tomorrow, on evenings such as this, Nigel does not let him sleep until the very, very late morning.

Orders keep coming in, the alcohol flows like water, into glasses and sloshing out of them, and Aiden's hands have grown tired sitting splayed beneath a tray, lower back sore from the amount of bending he has to do to gather the empty - near-empty, spilled - glasses from the atrociously low tables. He finds the only distraction are the clients themselves; always starting out friendly, then growing more so or less as the night wears on. Tonight, he finds himself between two in particular that seem to have a bet going on which of them can get Aiden more interested.

Neither are appealing, but playing along offers a good enough distraction; he has another two hours left.

"So what do beautiful boys like you do, Aiden?"

He just grins, "I'm skilled in bringing drinks and setting them." he replies, his only answer a loud laugh and a shake of the head; the man has had enough already, but still Aiden sets down another glass, winking as he straightens.

"And are you skilled in drinking them?"

Aiden tilts his head, eyes narrowed a moment before he leans back down to gather the drink he'd just bought to shoot it back. It takes a lot to keep the grimace off his face, and the man in front of him makes a very appreciative sound.

"Gorgeous."

Aiden shrugs.

"Bring us another round and stay a while."

"Another round I can do, but there are so many men after my company I can hardly deny them."

Laughter follows him as he returns to the bar, eyes rolling to the ceiling and smile fading. He requests a refill of the same order and returns the empty glass. The barman raises his eyebrow but says nothing. They aren't supposed to drink on shift, none of them, and yet they inevitably end up with two shots or twenty pushed at them throughout the course of the evening. Aiden has learned that after three, he has to casually excuse himself to go to the bathroom to throw them back up before the alcohol can hit his blood stream.

The drinks come, Aiden rolls his wrist over and over to get feeling back into his fingers before taking up the tray and making his way back.

He sets the shots down, takes the one ordered for him without prompting and downs it, setting the glass rim down against the table and resting his weight against it as his lips part in a gasp. Absinthe is not his favourite drink, and the house has quite the potent bottle. He bites his lip and laughs, a humming, gentle sound, before opening his eyes to regard the man who'd 'treated' him.

"Enjoy your night." he tells him.

"Come join me baby and I'll make sure I do."

Aiden steps away before it can escalate. If he's out of sight fast enough, the man will forget him, turn his eyes to the dancers like he should and the rest of the shift will go smoothly. He makes his way to the bar when someone reaches out to stop him, a hand against his side, and he turns.

Brown eyes and a familiar plume of smoke, and Aiden swallows thickly before casting his eyes around for his superior.

"Aiden."

"Nigel."

He's not around, thankfully, he's already threatened Aiden with being fired if he shows up to work one more time with bruises up and down his throat, and he'd made a point to arrive to work much earlier and have the girls help him cover them up. He's told Nigel, asked him, not to mark him up but had gotten nothing only darker bruises for his trouble.

 _"You're mine to mark."_ he'd said, _"I told you to quit that job."_

Nigel flicks his thumbnail against the butt of the cigarette and tips ash just over the arm of the chair he's in.

"Sit." it's quiet, should be too quiet to hear above the music and jeering cat-calls, but Aiden hears him, his entire body has grown used to being attuned to Nigel when he's near him, and it's not a pleasurable adaptation.

"I'm working." he tries, knowing that will get nothing more than a slow blink and a repetition of the question, tone steely, the sharpness of the edges suggesting the sharpness of the punishment later for his refusal.

Aiden's eyes return to Nigel's and the other need only raise an eyebrow for him to set the tray to the table and slide into his lap. Nigel sets the cigarette against his lips again and uses the free hand to draw a warm palm up the inside of Aiden's thigh. He brings up his other hand to take the cigarette away, exhaling slowly as he feels how Aiden trembles under his touch.

"I didn't know absinthe was your preference," he murmurs, nose set gently against Aiden's neck, the soft curve of muscle that leads up to just behind his ear. Aiden swallows.

"Far from it."

Nigel smiles against him and Aiden's eyes close a moment. There is something about this man, that is both dangerous and undeniably alluring. He has spent nearly every night with him since the night he'd picked him up, and nearly every morning he had woken sore, exhausted, unbelievably sated and weighed down with an aching fear of something happening if he stepped out of line. And yet, to date, he has not been punished. Has always done as asked, and on his day off has allowed himself to be pampered, treated, adored and used.

"You smell like green anise." Nigel murmurs, lips moving over Aiden's skin as the other arches a little into it. He hums the affirmative, he had just taken two shots of the vile stuff. He feels the hand against his thigh move higher and trembles, anticipating.

"And someone else's hands all over you."

It's said unbelievably gently, like a caress or something meant to soothe, and it chills Aiden to his core. He shifts, finds the hand against him gripping tighter, even as the lips never cease their gentle rubbing behind his ear.

"It's been a busy night," Aiden murmurs, gasping gently when Nigel moves to cup him.

"Has it?" Nigel's voice is like silk, he parts his lips a little wider to run the tip of his tongue over the shell of Aiden's ear. "Sit still."

He sits, endures the slow rubbing that works him harder and higher until he is biting his lip hard against any whimpers, and gripping one arm of the chair so hard his knuckles are white.

"You left so early this morning." Nigel tells him, pulling away to bring the cigarette to his lips once more, eyes on Aiden as he adds pressure and keeps working him up. After a moment he passes the cigarette over, watches Aiden regard it before taking it up, a gentle moan escaping him as he inhales - silence as he exhales.

"Needed things for work."

"Bring them with you."

Aiden laughs, but it's a choked sound. He takes another slow drag of the cigarette to distract himself from how close he is.

"I do," he says, "You've made a habit of ripping anything off me I don't remove fast enough." he makes a helpless little sound and shakes his head.

"Please let me up."

"Soon." the cigarette is passed back, Nigel inhales, watching Aiden shiver and twist in his hands, trying not to, trying so hard not to. He is rather proud of his endurance, one thing he absolutely adores about him is how long Aiden can hold out under duress and command, how sweetly he begs when it gets too much.

True to his word, Nigel lets him go as soon as he stubs the cigarette out against the metal ashtray on the table. He draws his hand up Aiden's stomach and over his shoulder to press against his neck and tug him closer.

"You will not come," he tells him, "And you will wait longer still when we get home."

"Why?" this, at least, he's allowed to ask. Aiden has noticed that Nigel thoroughly enjoys telling him what he's done to deserve one thing or another, in that sweet, soft tone that melts Aiden's knees and for a while makes him forget what Nigel is, and enjoy himself.

"Because the one night I leave you here alone," matter of fact, clear, fingers caressing Aiden's skin before the hand disappears and Aiden is encouraged to stand, "You forget who you belong to."

He watches Aiden from his seat, legs spread still as they had been to accommodate Aiden sitting down, lets his eyes slip down to see him hard in his ridiculous uniform.

"You better go," he dismisses, lower lip pressed between teeth as he suppresses a smile at how difficult it is for Aiden to move without working himself up; it is such a tight thing he wears, "It's a busy night."

-

By the time Aiden stumbles out the door his entire body is trembling. Needy and aroused beyond words he makes his way to the man waiting for him and slides into his arms to kiss him. Aiden tends to become somewhat blinded by lust around Nigel, something the man does very much encourage. When he pulls back he presses close, not quite rutting but very near.

"Take me home?"

Nigel watches him, brings the tip of his tongue to press against his front teeth gently before inclining his head and leading Aiden to the car. When they sit he reaches out, draws his hand over Aiden's legs again possessively and stops just short of where he wants him.

"Spread your knees," he says. Aiden obeys, arching his back into the motion in a very pleasing way, a demanding way. Nigel ignores it, draws the backs of his knuckles up the side of Aiden's thigh and pulls his hand away. "Stay that way."

He takes the long way home. Enjoying the sight of Aiden squirming in his peripheral vision. He doesn't touch him when they get to the carpark, nor in the lift, but when they get into the apartment he closes the door and presses Aiden up against it, their bodies flush together, and kisses him.

It's a possessive thing, rough and deep and under him Aiden opens up completely, pliant and soft and needy. He's trained him well, his boy, to respond, to show his pleasure if he wants more given to him.

"You just never learn," he breathes, catching Aiden's bottom lip between his teeth and tugging harshly before kissing him again, "That you are mine, do you?"

Aiden moans and rolls his hips in a playful struggle. "I was doing my job."

"Quit your job." it's sharp, a rebuke, but they only still for a moment before the kisses are back, deep and devouring, and Aiden is trembling by the time Nigel pulls away and turns from him to walk into the apartment proper.

It's just past 4am, the city is still barely breathing in the early morning, but alive regardless. He takes one of the heavy wide armchairs by the top and turns it to face the window, hands coming up to undo a button, two, of his shirt before turning to see where Aiden had gone.

Aiden, for his part, had not gone far, stayed against the door for a moment, pressing the heel of his hand against his cock to keep his orgasm at bay. He thinks he knows why Nigel's like this, why today specifically: he dislikes when anyone but him touches Aiden, talks to him how the men had been. He gets possessive, that possession turns to obsession, a need to show control in every way he can. And Aiden suffers.

He goes when beckoned, does as he's told when he's told to strip, surprised when Nigel doesn't watch, doesn't draw his hands over the exposed skin and make the task that much harder for him. He sits, instead, in the chair, heavily, and directs his eyes to the city.

"Turn on the light in the kitchen."

Aiden does.

"Come here to me."

When Aiden goes, he gets a kiss for his obedience, slow slide of palms down his sides and over the curve of his ass before fingers squeeze the skin, harsh enough to hurt, to leave a bruise for later. Aiden turns as directed, sits back as Nigel wants him, tilts his head against his shoulder and closes his eyes into the sensation of total abandonment.

He shifts a little when Nigel draws his hands under his knees and bends them, moving one to rest over one arm of the chair before that arm encircles Aiden to pull him closer, higher, as the other sets his other leg hooked over the other side, leaving Aiden spread open wide, hard against his stomach and appealing.

"Look." he commands, waiting for Aiden to do so, to look at the window and see the shaky outline of them both in the double-glazed windows. He turns away and feels Nigel catch his chin as he does. "You will look, Aiden."

Nigel ducks his head to nip lightly against Aiden's shoulder, "Simply touching you doesn't seem to drive the message home, so I need you to see this. Who owns you. Who you belong to."

He slides his palm flat over Aiden's cock before curling his fingers around it and starting a slow rhythm. It's enough, however, to get the boy to jerk, already sensitive and so, so close. Nigel savors it, the way Aiden trembles, then twists, then whimpers and tries to turn his head away, eyes barely open as he watches their reflection.

Nigel catches his chin and forces him forward again, rubbing the heel of his hand in slow circles over and over the glans until Aiden chokes on a cry and twists harder, thighs trembling but held open against the chair.

"No one else will ever see you like this," he murmurs into his ear, watching the reflection as well, denied the chance to watch Aiden's face contort in pleasure directly, "No one may touch you, toy with you, bring you pleasure like this."

Aiden sobs quietly and writhes.

"Please let me come..."

Nigel clicks his tongue, blinking slowly as though this entire situation upset him to initiate.

"This is punishment, Aiden, and you will take it until you've learned."

"I've learned," it's a whine, Aiden too far gone now to even attempt to keep a shred of his dignity as Nigel's palm moves lower again and strokes.

"Eyes forward," Nigel says, turning his face to nuzzle lightly against the side of Aiden's throat, already sticky with sweat from the effort it took to hold back. He waits before sliding his hand off Aiden's chin to see if he'll obey. He does. Though Nigel can tell he will not be able to obey the main command much longer. Pity. He looks stunning like this.

He brings his hand down to circle his hole, just rubbing there as Aiden cries out and shakes his head, letting it stay facing the window more or less, for Nigel to be satisfied.

"Please, please, please..."

"Who do you belong to?" Nigel asks patiently, twisting his wrist on the upstroke and sending Aiden into a series of harsh shivers.

"You -" he moans and shakes his head again, "You, I'm yours, Nigel, please."

"You are mine." his voice is calm, smooth, such a contrast to Aiden's breathless, high words. He does so love him like this. He turns his head again to bite against his neck as he strokes, as he feels every muscle in Aiden's body tense in anticipation and near-impossible endurance.

"Nigel..." the man closes his eyes - he sounds so broken, "Nigel please... please I'll be good!"

"You will be, yes," he purrs, keeps his boy on edge a moment longer before tugging his earlobe and allowing him relief.

Aiden's vision whites out for a moment, the pleasure so close to pain it barely matters which is which. When he comes down, he rests his entire weight against Nigel, panting to catch his breath, shaking with adrenaline and exhaustion, parting his lips obediently when Nigel presses sticking fingers against them. He licks them clean.

"You're mine, Aiden." he reminds him gently, nuzzling into his hair as the boy slides his feet to the floor before turning to curl into a ball in his lap. "You're completely mine."

"Completely yours," Aiden agrees, too tired to argue, too pleased to allow dark thoughts into his mind of how toxic this is, how poisonous. His relief has flooded him with pleasure, turning him pliant and willing and soft. a creature so unlike the Aiden that sets aside money every day, in the loose floorboard by the oven to save up for a ticket overseas, anywhere he can get. No. This Aiden parts his lips against Nigel's throat, licks a long line to his ear and sighs contentment.

For the evening, the other Aiden can rest.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He's beyond seeing reason on the matter. Despite Aiden reassuring him, telling him that he is only doing his job, that he needs the job to pay for rent over and over until Nigel pins him and kisses him to shut him up. He doesn't need the job. He doesn't need his damned apartment. He could move in, should move in, and then he wouldn't need to leave the house at all, beyond when they leave together._
> 
>  
> 
> 3 months in and there aren't so much cracks in the relationships and deep fucken canyons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok seriously, I almost feel it necessary to make a disclaimer for this series:  
> THIS IS NOT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP  
> IT WILL NOT BE ONE  
> THE FACT THAT NIGEL KNOWS HOW TO SHOW KINDNESS DOES NOT IN ANY WAY MEAN HE IS KIND
> 
> What I'm writing is a very damaged man trying to hold onto something that doesn't exist. Nigel is cruel, he is psychotic, and he and Aiden are not gonna live happily ever after. Just... making sure we're on the same page here.

Aiden's not sure what triggers him this time, with Nigel you never can quite tell, but it's the worst he's been. The underlying danger that wafted around the man on a good day had cemented to a shell and grown heavy, making Aiden's hair stand on end at the back of his neck when he was anywhere near him. And he had to be, the man was in the club ordering one drink after another so Aiden would deliver them to his table.

"There's a game," Aiden murmurs, setting another drink at Nigel's side and taking away the half-empty glass he'd replaced, "Out the back in one of the rooms. Just go."

"Are you trying to get me out of the club, Aiden?"

"I'm trying to get you to calm down."

Nigel looks at him, expression one of bewilderment, and Aiden looks back, long enough to lift his eyebrows and invite the man to deny he needs it. For once, Nigel doesn't. But he says nothing on the matter anyway.

"Go. Bet. Play however many hands it takes before my shift is done and take me home." he tells him, tone low and bordering on angry. He shouldn't be the one to tell Nigel where to go. He's learned well enough it's not something you did if you wanted to remain unscathed. And yet Nigel had yet to strike him, even once, in the time they'd been together. By Aiden's count, just nearing three months.

Nigel's eyes leave his, slide to another patron that had been rivaling Nigel's desire to imbibe alcohol for similar reasons - Aiden - before he tilts his head in that tell-tale way that makes Aiden's back tighten with nerves.

"It's just a job." he tells him again.

"Quit your job." Nigel replies, eyes hard before he takes the drink offered and swallows it, drawing his teeth back in a hiss as the alcohol burns its way down. Aiden stays long enough to gather the glass again, avoiding Nigel's hand as the other moves to pull him close. He knows what'll happen if he lets him. He returns to the bar and sets the tray down, folding his arms on the counter and resting his forehead on top, just breathing.

When he turns back to the club, Nigel's chair is empty.

-

The game is slow. Mostly calling stations, few real players, but it's enough to have Nigel's mind concentrating on something that isn't Aiden's blatant desire to be seen by everyone and anyone who wishes to look.

He had watched him in the past months, flirting with his customers, working quickly and efficiently and yet still finding the time to talk to some of the ones that frequented. Nigel hates it, hates watching that soft smile he believes is only for him make its way to Aiden's face as he talks to someone else.

He's beyond seeing reason on the matter. Despite Aiden reassuring him, telling him that he is only doing his job, that he needs the job to pay for rent over and over until Nigel pins him and kisses him to shut him up. He doesn't need the job. He doesn't need his damned apartment. He could move in, should move in, and then he wouldn't need to leave the house at all, beyond when they leave together.

The game is up, and Nigel had folded, watching as the cards are returned and reshuffled, set in for a new game that he pushes in chips for. His watch reads 3am. Another hour before his boy is free to go home, free to be pulled away and taken. The next day is his weekly day off as well, another day for Nigel to spend reminding Aiden that he is everything the boy could need, should need. Another day to hope he finally understands that he will never leave him, and that he shouldn't want to.

He wonders how much Aiden has saved up from the damned job. Knows that he sets more and more aside each week, has stopped tipping him quite as enthusiastically now that he has him and can satisfy him in other ways. But there are others. Others who push and tug and ease their way into Aiden's space and into his smile, and Nigel's teeth creak together with the force he's grinding them.

One patron leaves and another joins the game, and it takes just one double take for Nigel to realize the man is the one who had kept Aiden's attention away from him all night. The same one who had bought every drink to match Nigel's simply to have his boy near him. He turns back, takes his cards without looking at them and raises the bet. He taps out a rhythm against the back of his cards. A waltz he remembers hearing somewhere. One-two-three. Over and over until his breathing evens and he can see his cards without tearing them.

Servers come and go, taking drinks, setting them down, and the man - just like Nigel - pays none of them mind. And then towards the end of the next round, Aiden takes the place of one of the girls. Nigel watches him, deliberate and calm, serving everyone as though none of them matter more than the other, a metaphorical round table of equality. He brushes his fingers up Aiden's arm when he takes his drink and the other turns away without so much as a look. Nigel stills, eyes narrowed at his back, and still Aiden doesn't turn, just sets the drink down by the other man and turns to leave.

Apparently not fast enough, though, for the other not to reach out and catch his waist lightly, tug him back, and then the rest is blurry; the table stays upright but the rest is questionable. And it doesn't much matter, when he can now set his tapping waltz rhythm into a rapid succession of punches against the man's face. One-two-three. Over and over until there are thin arms around his neck tugging him back and he turns without thinking, striking whoever had tried to pull him away.

Aiden lands heavily but not far, one side of his face darkening with the force of the blow. He says nothing, but his expression is one Nigel had never hoped to see on him. Fear he can deal with, he is used to people being afraid of him, it's his job to intimidate. But betrayal he can't handle. He makes to kneel, to move closer to his boy and apologize but doesn't get the chance before security arrives and pushes him back, demands to know what happened.

"I didn't do nothing," the other man is saying, Nigel noting with a certain satisfaction that his nose is bent painfully off center, blood an endless torrent down his face. "Was placing my bet and the fucker jumped me."

Nigel doesn't deny it, doesn't do anything beyond watch Aiden push himself to his feet, steady enough despite the bruise evident against his cheekbone. There's a scratch too, not bleeding but raw, blood just below the surface of the skin. Aiden sets his jaw and doesn't look at Nigel at all. he does, however, look up when he's addressed by security.

"Was the man harassing you?"

Aiden's eyes narrow as though he's about to question which man in particular. Nigel feels his heart slow, anticipating, and then Aiden shakes his head.

"So he started the fight for no reason?"

Aiden draws his bottom lip into his mouth and shrugs. "Didn't see it." he murmurs, "I have no idea."

Nigel tilts his head, a nod for anyone looking to see the gesture, a shift for anyone not. Good boy. He would make it up to him for the strike, undeserved and angry, he would make it up to him. If only Aiden would look over...

"Do you know these men?" the security guy asks, and Aiden's shoulders stiffen significantly. He blinks, lets out a breath, and the tension with it and shrugs.

"They're customers." he says, "Both regulars."

Nigel's eyes narrow slowly, jaw working, and Aiden still doesn't look up.

"So you don't know this guy beyond him buying drinks all night?"

Aiden shakes his head, "I don't know him."

And it's then he looks over, eyes clear and completely remorseless with his denial, and Nigel goes very still. He doesn't hear the rest, just watches Aiden as he brings the back of his hand up to press against the bruise, hissing before carefully doing it again. He's led away and given a warning. One more strike then he's banned. Nigel accepts, doesn't retaliate as he's led back to the club and to the door, allowed to make his own way out without a scene.

He waits, takes a breath and makes his way back through the club and towards the back, where the private rooms are and the back door. He waits for the familiar curls to turn the corner, turn back as his name is called and nod, and make his way to the door and his exit. Without a word, Nigel loosens his tie, waits for Aiden to get close enough before grabbing his arm and twisting it back, not hard enough to do damage, but enough to have Aiden follow him without question to the first room he can find empty.

He pushes him inside, the door sliding closed behind them and grabs Aiden to pin him to the door.

"Don't, don't..." Aiden's words are coming quick and Nigel ignores them, just like Aiden had ignored him, pointedly and deliberately and playing for innocent. He loops his tie around one of his wrists and yanks Aiden's other arm back behind him to secure that too, twisting the tie end-through-knot to make it difficult to wriggle free.

"We can't be in here I'll get fired, Nigel please -"

"Oh, you remember my name now?" he hisses, pulling the tie taut until Aiden's arms are halfway up his back, secure but not painful. "Now that we're alone you remember who I am?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Aiden's shaking but not struggling, head ducked against the obscenely pink door he's forced against. "Please, you can beat me at home but we can't get caught here -"

"Beat you?" Nigel stills, stepping closer to press Aiden flat against the door until he whimpers, "You think I'll beat you? I've never raised a hand against you. Despite you blatantly, deliberately flirting with other men, damn near inviting them to have you - DO NOT SAY IT'S YOUR JOB!"

Aiden makes a helpless noise and murmurs another apology. If they're caught here, after the fight he was present for, with the man his manager knows is involved in more than just providing hefty tips, he will lose the job for good, no questions. And he's close, he is so close to having enough...

Nigel just holds him there, cold with anger, with something he could potentially, tentatively name betrayal of his own. Aiden had denied him despite everything. And he had thought he had the boy so close. He ducks his head and bites a mark against Aiden's shoulder, harsh and red, before gripping his hair and dipping his head back.

"Open." he waits, slides his fingers down to press against Aiden's jaw until he does, and shoves the end of the tie between his teeth. "Hold it. Keep quiet."

He can fuck Aiden in absolute silence if he has to, but Nigel will do it.

"You've said enough for one night. Now you listen."

Aiden does as he's told and rests his forehead against the door, tie between his teeth holding his arms up against his back. He doesn't protest as his shorts and nylons are tugged down and away, just closes his eyes and shakes. He could cry out, call rape, someone would be on Nigel in an instant to take him away, arrest him, get him out of Aiden's life forever - or long enough for him to flee the country at least. But he is so tired of running, of looking over his shoulder for fear of his father finding him; he doesn't need someone else.

And Nigel would find him, he is certain, at the ends of the earth but he would find him.

"You said you'd never lie to me, Aiden." Nigel's murmuring, pulling his hips back until Aiden's bent against the door, spreading his legs as far as they'd go with the stretching nylon still around his ankles.

"I've never lied to you. I've never done you that disservice. Call me anything you will, Aiden, but I am not a liar."

He spits on his hand and draws his fingers down to press between Aiden's legs, to rub against his hole before pushing two fingers in at once. Aiden sobs quietly and jerks in pain, and for a moment Nigel says nothing, concentrates on getting him as slick and open as he can with only spit for lubrication. It won't be enough. It'll hurt.

"How can you say you don't know me?" he hisses, undoing his own fly when Aiden's no longer struggling against his hand, "When I've let you know me better than anyone else."

When he pushes in it's quick and harsh, Aiden's whimper loud even against the tie, and he soothes him, nuzzles against his shoulder until Aiden turns his head, just enough to accept the gesture as kindness. The pace he sets is unrelenting, fast and deep and rough enough for the friction to be less than comfortable, and still Aiden takes it, in relative silence, as Nigel continues to feed guilt into his ear.

When Nigel comes, he stills, one hand pressing against the door by Aiden's face as he finishes and pulls out, giving no regard to Aiden's needs as he catches his breath. Then he tugs the tie from between Aiden's teeth and releases his hands so the boy can dress himself.

Aiden's shaking is uncontrollable, fuelled by adrenaline more than anything else. He doesn't look at Nigel until the other steps close to him again, tilting his chin up with his fingers to see the bruise he'd caused, to run his thumb over the red line the tie had caused being pressed to harshly against the edge of his mouth. He doesn't kiss him.

"Don't do that again, Aiden." he murmurs, and it's gentle now, soft, and Aiden nods, eyes wide and wet, and when Nigel lets him go he steps forward and grips his shirt to hold on, face buried in the fabric.

For a long moment they just stand, the younger man holding on and shaking with silent sobs, but no tears, Nigel letting him have the comfort, before taking his hand to card through Aiden's hair and rest lightly against his neck. When Aiden pulls back his expression is just exhausted, and he actually looks up, fully meeting Nigel's eyes as he hadn't done all night.

"Take me home." he breathes. And Nigel steps back, just far enough for Aiden's balance to be his own, and unlocks the door.

-

When they get home, Aiden excuses himself to take a shower. For his part, Nigel moves to the kitchen to rinse his bloody knuckles under the cold water. It had been such an easy thing, to just throw himself off his chair at the other man, and strike again and again until he felt bone give under his fists. Because he had touched something that wasn't his. He had touched Aiden and Aiden had let him.

He wonders idly if it's because Aiden had let him, when he hadn't let Nigel, when he hadn't let him all night, that he had struck out quite so publicly. He supposes it hardly matters in the end.

He flexes his fingers and presses the tap closed, winding a tea towel around his hand and dabbing it dry. Behind him he can hear the sound of the shower going, loud and pounding, the smell of shampoo making its way from under the door into the bedroom. It's familiar, and it shouldn't be. 

Before he had yanked Aiden into his life he rarely had anyone there. With the work he does, Nigel does not have time to care, nor does he want to anymore. Enough had happened to set that idea as a bad one, reinforced time and again that caring brought nothing more than pain in itself, usually far more brutal than not caring did. And yet, he'd seen Aiden at the club, watched him smile, and realized he had to have him, had to bring him home and take him.

And so he had. Over and over, in any position the boy would bend, and he had found, despite everything, that he enjoyed Aiden most in the early mornings, when he was still barely awake and pliant, warm under the covers with easy smiles and sloppy, happy kisses. That he liked when Aiden would curl against him on his own volition, press close and hum in contentment as Nigel brought a hand between them to stroke him up. That he loved watching Aiden finally let go of his bottom lip, eyes still closed but cheeks now flushed dark with arousal, loved feeling him rub against him with sweet, soft sounds until Nigel finally rolled him over, tugged his hips up and pushed in.

He sets the towel aside and runs a hand through his hair with a sigh, sitting heavily on the bed as the water continues to pound in the bathroom.

The last month had proven as difficult as the first had been, with Aiden twisting away from him, trying to get space, to prepare to leave. Nigel knows the signs, reads them on Aiden as easily as he knows he himself shows them when he's about to push something out of his life, and he doesn't like it. It sets him on edge to know that something that makes him so comfortable, feel so powerful and good, doesn't want him back.

Someone.

Not something, someone.

Perhaps therein lies his error.

He looks up when the water shuts off in the bathroom, lets his eyes follow the shadows under the door as Aiden gets out and dries off, moves to the sink and around the bathroom. He waits. And when Aiden finally opens the door he stands up and sets his hands on either side of Aiden's face and kisses him.

Aiden doesn't struggle, but he stiffens, parting his lips to reciprocate the kiss but not shift to deepen it. When Nigel pulls back he meets Aiden's eyes and holds them, brown against blue.

"I'm sorry." he tells him, and he means it. Sorry for the strike, not even meant for him and now stark and harsh against his pale face. Sorry that the only way he can show the man he wants him, needs him in his life, is by violently taking, forcing him to be there. He watches to see how the words affect Aiden, sees his eyes widen a little before he blinks. He doesn't know if Aiden believes him, but he isn't leaving, isn't struggling to get away, so Nigel kisses him again.

This time, Aiden is more accepting of it, sighing softly against him and letting his eyes close before following Nigel as he backs up and sits down on the bed, Aiden crawling on top to straddle him. His skin is still slightly damp when Nigel touches it, runs his fingers over his shoulders and down to tug at the knot holding the towel up until it comes loose and falls away.

He pulls Aiden against him and lies back, tucking his heel against the mattress to push them both further onto the bed before he rolls them to lay Aiden on it and slide to his knees himself. He hushes him gently when Aiden seem wont to spread his legs, nuzzles the insides of his thighs until he allows it and Nigel can assess the damage done. He'd been rough with him, much rougher than he'd ever been before. He would punish Aiden accordingly with endurance or denial, but never pain.

He leans in and licks a gentle line over the red puckered skin and feels Aiden shift above him. He pauses to see if the other will move further back, deny him this chance to make amends; he won't force this. But Aiden just takes a breath, lets it out through his nose, and lies still, so Nigel leans in closer and keeps going.

It doesn't take long before Aiden is panting above him, hips rolling against his mouth, rising and falling in slow shifts against his hands where he holds him. His knees draw together, spread wide, over and over in a series of movements Nigel is certain Aiden has no control over anymore. He's lost in the sensation, allowing it, enjoying it, and in a way, that's all Nigel really wants from him.

He presses his tongue in deeper and brings one hand up to stroke Aiden up, waiting until he's whimpering, curling his body into soft shapes of pleasure before rubbing his thumb over the slit, again and again until Aiden cries out and comes, hot and slick in his hand, and Nigel draws away. He works Aiden through it until the other shifts in discomfort and Nigel ducks his head to press a kiss against his hip, leaving Aiden alone for a moment to wash his hands and mouth in the bathroom.

He doesn't bother turning the light on in the bedroom when he extinguishes it in the bathroom, throwing the room into pre-dawn darkness. It hardly matters, he can see what he needs to; Aiden still on top of the sheets, one arm over his eyes, the other gentle against his stomach as he dozes. Nigel watches him for a long moment, until Aiden arches up with a quiet groan and drops his arm to the pillow behind him, turning his head to look at Nigel and quirk his lips in a questioning smile.

And Nigel knows that that smile is just his, no one elses. That Aiden is contented and soft, will be warm when he pulls him close, and will go willingly. Knows that in the morning he will wake up to him kissing his way down his chest and lower, sending Nigel a mischievous grin before sucking him down. Knows that the only way he will ever let Aiden leave him will be in a body bag.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The first time Aiden draws Nigel, it's on the back of a napkin with a ballpoint pen. It's sketchy and small, and shows him in profile, with his eyes down and his jaw locked in irritation. He details it down to the shoulders, then lets the image fade off into a mess of scribbles and cross-hatching. He doesn't keep it._
> 
> Just a filler part to whet the palette while it's still November. More coming. Another chapter at least, perhaps two.
> 
> PLEASE READ NOTES.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No idea if anyone is even interested in this anymore since the film came out and Brea has chosen a new ship for Nigel... but I suppose I promised and I'll keep this baby going till it ends, I mean it made people happy for a time so why not?
> 
> Would be nice to know if people wanted more, though... I'll adjust priorities for it if there was demand still, regardless of the film release and new ship ;)

The first time Aiden draws Nigel, it's on the back of a napkin with a ballpoint pen. It's sketchy and small, and shows him in profile, with his eyes down and his jaw locked in irritation. He details it down to the shoulders, then lets the image fade off into a mess of scribbles and cross-hatching. He doesn't keep it.

He finds that it's easy to meditate on the man when he lets him. After the night in the club where Nigel had struck him, he had grown almost frighteningly attentive. He would spend hours on touching Aiden gently, reminding him that the strike had been in anger and not aimed at him at all. Aiden had forgiven him, in as much as he could forgive him, but there's a strange wariness in Nigel now that Aiden hasn't seen before, and it's somewhat unnerving to be paid so much attention.

For a week, he finds himself eating lavish dinners at restaurants he would not even look into for fear of his money simply disappearing on him, and for a week, Nigel is the epitome of the perfect partner. But throughout the entire week, Nigel is tense, he is nervous, he looks far more sad than he had before this odd courtship had started.

The second time he draws him, Nigel notices, but says nothing. This one is of him distracted, brows gently furrowed as his eyes seek something Aiden never drew in detail; his phone perhaps or a book. He looks tired, but he doesn't look angry. Aiden scraps it with a chuckle and kisses Nigel before he goes to take a shower before work.

Nigel retrieves the drawing and flattens it, folds it into a ledger on his desk and forgets it's there.

After that, drawing Nigel becomes as common and as easy as drawing any of his characters for the novel, and Aiden doesn't stop himself from doing it. He incorporates him into the background crowds, into passing figures with sloped shoulders and a smudge of a tattoo against his neck. He draws him under streetlights, smoke curling blue from the cigarette at his lips.

Once initial sketches are done, Aiden finds himself adjusting the main character to have sharper cheekbones, deeper eyes, a thin expressive mouth.

Nigel finds the discarded sketches all over the flat. In the dustbins and under the newspaper in the kitchen. Aiden still has his apartment, refuses to move in with Nigel properly despite the man's best efforts, but there is enough of him here to be a significant presence. And with the drawings, Nigel finds himself more and more fond.

It takes a month more for Aiden to save up enough to get a one-way ticket out of town. He has the money in neat packs under the floorboard in his kitchen, and he can't bring himself to take it out and buy the thing. Can't bring himself to leave all his things and just walk away.

When he finally quits the Flamingo, Nigel brings him home and makes love to him on the couch, until they are both completely spent and exhausted, and Aiden's smile hurts him. He traces patterns over Nigel's back, over his chest when the man finally moves and tugs Aiden along to join him in bed where they'll be more comfortable. He draws forests and mountains that only he can see, and wakes up late, alone, and sated.

He doesn't buy the ticket.

But he keeps drawing Nigel, as a dark silhouette on the street, his hands against the cool rail of a boat in the harbor, eyes up at the sky waiting for something. He sends a few pages to his publisher and waits, allowing himself to forget how dangerous his situation is, how precarious, as Nigel's possessiveness rears its head again and he pushes for Aiden to move in with him once more.

He doesn't.

He waits.

He scribbles his face on stray tickets and sides of the newspaper, he goes when Nigel pulls him to him in the shower and in bed, he parts his lips on helpless sounds of enjoyment and sobs of pleasure.

He waits.

When the letter comes promising an advance on the novel, Aiden goes out. He buys a bottle of expensive wine and allows Nigel to suck it from his skin. He wakes early and traces the sharp lines of the man's face with his eyes, soothed a little by sleep and the warmth his expression has acquired being with Aiden so long. He traces his lips with gentle fingers, extricates himself from the warm hands holding him and dresses.

He buys the ticket, one way, to London.

He doodles Nigel's face on the receipt and tosses it into the trash before returning to his apartment, packing his things, and bringing them to Nigel's doorstep, lying with a smile when the man asks if he's finally changed his mind.

He says yes.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He wonders if he’ll ever escape him, having so willingly taken him with him in the novel. He considers the words he has made his character say, the one who wears Nigel’s face, carries his burdens, curls the accent around his fingers like smoke from a cigarette._
> 
> Written for the lovely [solamentenic](http://solamentenic.tumblr.com/), who requested the continuation of this series, with some choice scenes within. I hope it's to your liking bb, it's been a while since I roused Nigel and Aiden from their comfortable tension.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the summer run of [Hannibal-ACCA](http://hannibal-acca.tumblr.com/) and they have permission to post and reblog this piece wherever they like.

Aiden’s eyes had always been the reason Nigel found himself utterly speechless. When even expletives were not enough to cover the depth of them, the way they widened, how they were so utterly open even when the boy himself refused to be.

Aiden’s eyes were his undoing.

“This is new.”

Aiden’s gaze doesn’t waver, hair in his face and lips parted to breathe, but he doesn’t blink, doesn’t look away.

“Your hand is shaking, you might want to watch that.” Nigel murmurs, smile curling his lips as Aiden’s hand flexes against the grip and his brows furrow.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Nigel clicks his tongue. “Filthy mouth. Obviously I didn’t fuck it hard enough.”

Aiden swallows, brings his second hand up to brace the first, the gun heavier than he’d anticipated, colder. He hates the feeling of it against his hands and yet Nigel just smiles more.

“You can’t fucken kill me if you can’t fucken aim, Aiden.”

Another swallow, thick, and still no waver in intent. The gun remains pointed steadily at Nigel’s chest, at his heart. Nigel just takes a step forward.

“Aiden -”

The shot rings out, too sharp in the air, too loud, and Aiden finally blinks. Lips part wider as his jaw slackens, as breath escapes him in a quick gasp.

“Shit.”

-=-

_A Few Hours Earlier._

-=-

Aiden isn't always the first awake anymore. Nigel watches him through barely open eyes, takes in the regular rise and fall of his back as he sleeps. He's facing him, one hand curled under the pillow and pushing it out of shape - or perhaps into shape, to be comfortable - the other bent and resting just gently against his face.

Aiden's lips are barely parted but he's breathing through his nose.

He looks younger.

He doesn't shift in sleep, his eyes don't move under his eyelids; so deeply asleep that he sees no dreams. He lies almost like a doll, a living, breathing, beautiful doll, and for a moment Nigel wonders if that's all the boy is to him anymore. A beautiful toy. To show off and play with and watch the reactions write themselves on his face.

Aiden has such an expressive face. Has expressive hands. He's constant movement and energy, he fidgets when he has to sit for long periods of time without moving or doing something. He sketches when he can get his hands on a pencil. Anywhere. And he draws everything.

Mostly he draws Nigel.

Outside, a car alarm goes off, and Aiden frowns in sleep, eyes moving just a little, brows furrowing, and Nigel holds his breath, wonders if he'll wake, wonders if he'll blink his eyes open slowly, reluctant to wake from the comfortable embrace of sleep, and find Nigel and smile at him.

But the sound isn't enough to rouse him, enough to have Aiden adjust his position, stretch his full length across the bed and turn to press his face further into the pillow, sighing long and slow before settling back to his previous rhythm of peaceful breathing.

There's a bruise sucked deep and dark just behind his ear, Aiden's hair barely covers it. Nigel knows if he pulls the covers back he'll find the other marks of the night before, the more faded marks of nights before that. If he closes his eyes he can imagine the slow breaths melding to sighs, to whimpers and soft cries of pleasure.

Aiden makes a gentle sound in sleep and Nigel forces himself to stay awake, to look at him.

Nigel watches him until the sky lightens more outside, soothes the shadows playing against Aiden's face to something gentler. When he gets up he doesn't wake him.

Instead, Aiden wakes on his own, just as the door clicks closed behind Nigel and he can hear the man’s footsteps in the landing fading to just echoes of themselves. He sighs, opens his eyes and stares balefully out the window.

It’ll rain today, he thinks, turn all outside into slush and mud, a far from pleasant place to be, and exactly the place he’s going.

Aiden remembers, vaguely, about some old superstition that rain before a trip is for good luck, and he hopes with everything he has that that’s the case. He needs luck today.

The apartment is one he has come to quite like over the weeks he’s lived here. It’s quiet, the neighbourhood a good one, expensive and almost isolated because of it. Within, it’s clean and modern, with a few touches of odd antiques here and there that add a strange twist to both genres. What’s stranger, still, is that Nigel knows where each has come from, even if he wasn’t the one to acquire them.

He’ll miss it.

Aiden doesn’t allow himself to think that he will miss Nigel.

He knows only that Nigel is out. But where, how long for, who with… that Aiden never asks and only guesses at. Sometimes Nigel leaves for an hour, other times for a day. It’s never constant. The only thing that remains that way is the way Nigel greets him after, as though Aiden is the only thing in the world worth coming home to, as though he would never let harm come to him from another, and never let him go.

It’s more stifling than affectionate.

Aiden doesn’t pack more than he needs, enough clothes and books to fill his duffel bag. His newest jeans, his most sturdy boots. A shirt with another on top, a scarf around his neck and one of Nigel’s suit jackets.

He doesn’t leave a note.

Aiden considers using his money on a cab, but takes the bus instead. The airport’s close enough to the stop that he can walk from the end of the line and if he gets wet, well.

Rain’s for luck.

He curls up at the back of the bus, feet on the seat after a brief glance at the driver to make sure the man wouldn’t notice. He sets his bag beside him to keep away unwanted company and watches the world pass by as the bus sets off with a grind and a loud release of air from the brakes.

Aiden had told his publisher not to contact him at the apartment, has had nothing since the acceptance of his work, just his own sketches, the character that looks just like the man he’s leaving. He wonders if he’ll ever escape him, having so willingly taken him with him in the novel. He considers the words he has made his character say, the one who wears Nigel’s face, carries his burdens, curls the accent around his fingers like smoke from a cigarette.

A constant silhouette under a streetlight, just as Aiden had first seen him.

Seen and never registered, then.

He chews the side of his thumb, fingers tapping against his palm in familiar fidgeted impatience. He thinks of the night before, again, shivers pleasantly at the memory, casts his eyes around to make sure no one caught the motion before letting himself settle in the comfort of thought as the bus turns onto the first stretch of highway.

He’d told Nigel to watch, to sit back and settle his hands behind him against the wall, head leaning against his palms. 

“Comfortable?”

He’d just smiled, narrowed his dark eyes before raising his chin in affirmation, a reverse of a nod and yet just as telling, just as authoritative. Aiden had smiled, raised his eyebrows in silent question before slowly peeling his shirt off and over his head.

“Tell me when you’re not, anymore.”

A sound of surprise, interest, but nothing else voiced, following instructions strangely well for someone who hates being given them. Aiden relishes the power he’s allowed, for this moment, this hour, this evening, he doesn’t know, he never knows, and sometimes it doesn’t at all matter.

Aiden hadn’t made a show of stripping for Nigel, the man took far too much pleasure in tearing clothes off him for a slow tease to have any effect. But he had deliberately moved just out of arm’s reach, were Nigel to disobey the soft order of before and drop his hands to touch.

“Just one,” Aiden had said, smile matching that of the man in front of him, a learned expression, one that sits well on him when he uses it. Nigel certainly seems to relish in seeing another part of himself in Aiden on occasion, beyond his bruises and his hands.

“My cock or my ass?”

Both words had sent a pleasant tension through Nigel, and for a moment he’d just considered Aiden there, comfortable and close, before licking his lips.

“I want that ass tight when I fuck you for this later.”

Aiden had bitten his lip, grinned, and brought his hand down to stroke his cock instead.

A game, just a game, showing Nigel something he had touched, something he knew he owned and desired, and disallowing the power, for the moment, to reclaim it. It had been a slow build, from gentle strokes to quick harsh ones, thighs spreading, back arching in uncontrollable pleasure, until Nigel had said his name, brought him around just enough to grin, to watch Aiden smile back…

The bus jerks and Aiden nearly falls out of the seat, cheeks flushed for a moment, wondering if someone had somehow seen what he had, in his brief venture to the past. There are only three other passengers on the bus now and none of them seem to care. All plugged into iPods or phones, uncaring for anyone or anything around them.

Aiden licks his lips, checks the time.

The bus would get him to the airport within 3 hours of departure, and by his calculation he had another 30 minutes to travel. He settles again, face against the glass, and doesn’t notice when his eyes slip shut in sleep, lulled there by the rocking of the bus, by the memories of finally crawling closer to Nigel, having the man yank him close with rough hands, kiss him with a rough mouth and feeling filthy words spread against his skin.

-=-

Aiden isn't always the first awake anymore, and when he comes to, soft fingers are trailing through his hair, separating the strands and lightly scratching his scalp. The sensation is enough to send him back to sleep if not of the panicked tugging at the back of his mind, a reminder that he fell asleep on the bus, alone, and he shouldn’t be waking, now, to company.

He tenses, hears a gentle shushing sound that sends chills through his bones and doesn’t move.

“A cab would have been faster,” Nigel points out gently, fingers still gentle, deceptively, dangerously gentle, “You could have afforded one, Aiden, if you’d wanted to get away enough. But here we are.”

And here they were, the bus still moving and groaning beneath Aiden’s body where he lays slumped, the window no longer his pillow, but the familiar muscle-hard thighs of Nigel. He doesn’t ask how the man had found him, assumes he’d never actually gone, had never fully left, had followed Aiden when he’d gone, had found the bus route, driven ahead, caught it at the next stop most convenient.

He raises his eyes to the window. Outside it isn’t raining.

Go fucken figure.

“Where are we going today, then?” conversational, just as dangerous as the touches that render Aiden helpless and pliant. “A bag packed and my jacket taken. Light clothing for where we are, are you going far?”

Aiden just breathes, keeps the rhythm of that slow and easy, a gentle ebb and flow, in and out, until the hand in his hair tightens and he makes a soft noise of pain.

“London.” he grits out quietly. He can’t see anyone else, doesn’t know how many people are left on the bus, if any. Where he’d chosen the sit, the seats in front of him obscure him entirely from view, and Nigel as well. Four seats in front on either side of the bus, a narrow space to shift through to get to the very back seats where they are.

“London?” mild surprise before the hand in his hair yanks and Aiden’s forced to shove his hands against the seat to not put all his weight on his hair.

“Fucken London, Aiden?”

A gaze shared between them, lingering, surprise met with a glare met with a grin.

“So rude of you not to say goodbye, to leave something of yours for me to fucken remember you by.”

Aiden swallows, Nigel glances away for a moment, scanning the bus as Aiden had thought to just moments before. Apparently satisfied, he turns back.

“Perhaps that, at least, can be remedied, if you put that gorgeous mouth of yours to good use.”

Aiden tenses, shifts back and feels the inevitable tug against his hair when the grip there doesn’t relent. Nigel’s hand twists enough to draw a soft noise from him and both still.

“Just one, Aiden,” Nigel hisses, a dark mimic to the soft words from the night before, “Either I fuck that mouth or that ass, right here and right fucken now, your choice.”

The anger radiates off of him, like it had the night Aiden had ignored him at the club, had pretended not to know him before Nigel had shoved him face first against one of the back rooms and fucked him raw. He knows there is promise and threat both in that tone.

Again Aiden’s eyes cast around, a quick panicked scan for an out, and still, momentarily, against Nigel’s belt. His lips press together and he blinks to direct his eyes up.

“You like my ass tight to fuck later, right?” he reminds him, voice just as soft, doubtful to carry to anyone, if anyone is there. What could they do if they heard, anyway, before Nigel did something worse? Without another word, he draws a hand over to undo the button on Nigel’s pants, slide down the fly.

Nigel makes a soft sound, carried on a sigh, and his fingers relax in Aiden’s hair when he takes him into his mouth.

Considering the man’s penchant for violence and control, this is something he had rarely made Aiden do to him. All the more reason, Aiden supposes, to force this on him now, it’s own cruel little reminder. He takes Nigel as deep as he’s able before he feels his throat close, twitch, the gag reflex he rarely exercises kicking in immediately.

The hand against him tightens and Nigel doesn’t shift from how he sits; head back against the seat, eyes barely open.

“All of it, Aiden,” he murmurs, the threat clear enough.

Aiden is permitted a moment more to take a breath before he’s forced down harder, eyes watering at the sensation, soft sounds escaping him at the discomfort. He manages to figure out a pattern to swallowing and breathing before Nigel deliberately breaks it, arches his back to push his hips deeper, to feel Aiden struggle harder against him.

“Never did take enough advantage of this,” he sighs, voice soft and directed downwards, “You really are the star little cocksucker aren’t you.” the last word is stolen by a groan as Aiden swallows harder and hums, the vibrations enough to distort much of Nigel’s senses, to set his muscles tense, his fingers tighter in Aiden’s hair before relaxing.

“Fuck.”

He shifts, turns just a little, allows enough give for Aiden to pull back with a gasp, a cough, before tugging him in again, this time not quite as far, relishing in the way Aiden bobs his head against him, sucks hard against the head before rubbing the rough back of his tongue over it.

“All the more reason not to let you go - that mouth,” Nigel growls, sliding further down the seat as Aiden’s hands slide to rest against his thigh, against his lower back to hook over his belt, over the holster there.

“Don’t you dare fucken bite,” Nigel warns, pushing up against Aiden’s resistance as he holds him still, fucks his mouth with languid strokes as as Aiden forces his eyes shut and concentrates on breathing.

How long this lasts he can’t tell. It becomes a twisted nightmare of sweat and spit and semen within a few moments, messy, degrading, yet enough to have Nigel’s breathing hitch, to have his pulse jump where Aiden can feel it in his groin. It shames him to know he’s growing hard himself just from doing this, just allowing himself to be used in such a cruel, public way.

His hands seek further still, and he moans, pulling a loud curse from Nigel, enough of a distraction to peel the gun from its holster and slide it down into his own pocket, under pretense of touching himself over this.

Pleasure always did make Nigel blind.

“Fuck, yes, fuck.”

Another thrust, deeper, harsher, and then the bitter salt of cum, that Aiden almost gags on. He swallows, though, careful and quick, sucking hard before Nigel finally lets him go, lets him up, and Aiden coughs and draws his knees up quickly to himself so he can curl up.

There are still three people on the bus besides them. None have bothered to turn, to look. Aiden forces his heart to calm. Watches out the window as above them planes fly close to the earth - they’re not far.

Beside him, Nigel puts himself away, adjusts the way he sits to set a knee against the chair in front of him.

“Deceptive, ungrateful boy.” he sighs, turning his head to watch Aiden carefully as the other resolutely avoids him. Nigel takes in the red lips, the flushed cheeks the corners of those stunning blue eyes he has never been able to get enough of.

“You’re not going to London.”

Aiden says nothing. Feels the unfamiliar weight of the weapon in his pocket. Watches as the bus slows for the first light since the stop Nigel had gotten on, and stops.

Outside, it begins to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaah I know I'm gonna get hounded for this. Yes, there is another chapter, the final one, and yes I will write it as part of this commission, but it's been a little crazy with work and family at the moment and I haven't yet managed to complete it to post. But I will :) please be patient with me, you held out this long and I am so grateful!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“And I fucking will if I let you go?” Nigel sneers, “You want me to believe that if I let you get on that fucking plane that I will fucking_ see _you again?”_
> 
> _“Take a fucking gamble, Nigel, you bet your own life anyway. You bet anything you can find, so bet trust, then, if you think we’re fine.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My god... the last chapter?? As promised months and months ago?? COULD IT BE?
> 
> Yes, yes it could.

The airport is fairly quiet at this time of day, the last of the morning planes having taken off, others taxiing back to their docks, waiting for passengers, for a technical assessment. And people… people come and go. Some looking haggard as though they have just gotten off a plane, others looking the same about to get on one.

Aiden watches from afar, through the sliding glass doors across the road from the main entrance. They stand beneath a streetlight, Nigel smoking, Aiden with his bag between his feet. They had gotten off the bus in silence, and then had stopped here. What the point is, beyond teasing Aiden with freedom, he is unsure, but he’s certain he is not looking forward to that cigarette being put out with a hiss against the rain-soaked ground.

He supposes he could run, get to where there were more people and call for help. A security guard, the police, someone. He knows, too, that someone would listen. Especially at the airport. He knows just the same that he could escape Nigel here, and find him waiting for him in London when he landed. A man like this was not easily lost, hardly easily forgotten.

What tugs at Aiden the most, is that part of him does not want to leave, at least not on bad terms. Perhaps a negotiation, perhaps an extended holiday with supervision. He hates it, he feels like a child, as though his father is hounding him again, aware of where he is and how to find him. It’s that possession, that obsession with molding, turning, making the boy into something he wants instead, just as Nigel has done; though when Aiden’s father had played with his life, Nigel had played at merely controlling it.

Stay with me.

Just with me.

Do not go out or to others or away from me at all.

Ever.

“You know, I had things to do today,” Nigel comments, tone low as he flicks the butt of his cigarette, dislodges some of the ash off the tip to fall into slush on the ground, “I was going to sort some shit out, come home to you. But you fucked that right up. Now I’m a fucking babysitter, following a wayward boy on adventures he’s too young to have.”

Aiden’s jaw sets and he swallows hard, before taking his bag up and heaving it up to his shoulder, heavier from the rain. Nigel just watches him.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

“London.” Aiden tells him, manages to be just out of arm’s reach when Nigel grabs for him, and then walks at a brisk pace towards the doors. It’s not an escape, not really. Perhaps just space from the patronizing words that are meant to rile him up, anger him, turn him into an uncontrollable young man who needed the help, the supervision, the company always. Never alone, not yet mature enough.

An arm snares him around the middle and Aiden nearly yelps in frustration as he’s pulled around the corner, further back, away from eyes and people and doors and planes. There are two hours before his flight, he will miss check in and customs, he will miss his plane and all his money, hard earned, hard saved, would be for nothing. He kicks back and finds a hand up against his mouth, now, too, until his back meets the cold wet brick of the alley behind one of the terminals.

Isolated and cold, bag tossed aside and hair a mess, Aiden glares.

“I’m not a fucking toy, Nigel!”

“But you are mine.” The tone leaves little room for contestation and Aiden is silenced again when he tries to interrupt, palm against his mouth, catching him with his jaws parted so he can’t even bite down against him, can do little more than squirm against the older man’s harsh grip.

“You gave yourself to me,” Nigel reminds him, “you fucking went, when I picked you up, you fucking went when I waited, you fucking moved the fuck in. None of this, none of it is anyone’s fucking choice but yours, Aiden, and now you want to leave?”

Aiden makes a plaintive sound, claws at the hand against him so he can answer, that this is his choice too, that he will make it, that he will break free of all of this, just like he had before, with his father. He will find work, get his book published, earn money and live. And perhaps, then, he would come back. But he would do it on his own, he would not be leashed.

He manages just a moan, little else, before directing his eyes up and meeting Nigel’s, softening his own expression to soften his as well. At length, he’s allowed to close his mouth again, to swallow to wet his throat, to actually speak.

“You took, I did not give,” Aiden tells him softly, shaking his head and drawing a hand over his face, working through the soft stubble there, a few days let to grow now. He swallows. “God fucking dammit, Nigel you have to let me go if you want me to come back, ever, otherwise you will fucking lose me, is it that hard to understand?”

A raised eyebrow, that familiar angry twitch of Nigel’s jaw as his eyes narrow and Aiden’s heart beats in anticipation of something awful. Above them, another plane takes off, the noise almost deafening, drowning out everything but the white noise of it. Like the rain that’s still falling, drenching them both and pulling a shiver from Aiden that Nigel immediately notes, refuses to comment on.

The hellish noise echoes and passes them by, and Aiden turns away to look towards the mouth of the alley.

“You think I’m fucking stupid to let you go?” Nigel asks him, and Aiden snorts.

“I think you’re stupid to think you can keep me and delude yourself into thinking we’re fine.”

“We’re fucking fine.”

“I am _running_ to another _country_ from you, Nigel!” Aiden yells, enough that his voice carries, but not far. He is livid, upset, shaking, and still that lingering part, that stupid, trembling part of him wants to step closer and press against Nigel’s chest, feel the man hold him against him, strong arms possessive, protective, addictive all.

“I am escaping the country so I don’t have you controlling my every fucking breath, we are not fine.” Aiden swallows. “If you keep me from this, there will be another ticket, there will be another time and I will run and you will not see me again that I can guarantee you.”

“And I fucking will if I let you go?” Nigel sneers, “You want me to believe that if I let you get on that fucking plane that I will fucking _see_ you again?”

“Take a fucking gamble, Nigel, you bet your own life anyway. You bet anything you can find, so bet trust, then, if you think we’re fine.”

For a moment they are utterly silent, both angry, and then Aiden moves a split second before Nigel does, just one step fast enough to get out of arm’s reach before he’s caught anyway, shoved to the ground of the alley and yanked back to lie pressed beneath the man, adamant, as he always is, that he is right, that he knows best, that everything is fine, it’s fucking fine.

The water slicks the ground too much, enough for Aiden to squirm back, kick out and get his own feet under him.

Rain for luck.

One hand goes to his pocket, the other shaking to cock the damn gun when he has it, pointing it to the man on the ground as Nigel watches him, first surprised, then angry, then genuinely amused.

“This is new.”

Aiden’s gaze doesn’t waver, hair in his face and lips parted to breathe, but he doesn’t blink, doesn’t look away.

“Your hand is shaking, you might want to watch that.” Nigel murmurs, smile curling his lips as Aiden’s hand flexes against the grip and his brows furrow. He moves to stand. Aiden lets him.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Nigel clicks his tongue. “Filthy mouth. Obviously I didn’t fuck it hard enough.”

Aiden swallows, brings his second hand up to brace the first, the gun heavier than he’d anticipated, colder. He hates the feeling of it against his hands and yet Nigel just smiles more.

“You can’t fucken kill me if you can’t fucken aim, Aiden.”

“I don’t want to kill you, I want you to back the fuck off,” Aiden tells him, “and let me go.”

There is a moment, just one, where Aiden imagines something like anguish passes over Nigel’s features. Genuine upset at seeing him go, at seeing him run from Nigel when he could have talked to him about it, discussed this together, made plans. Perhaps he should have tried, caught Nigel in a rare moment of intimacy and explained why he wanted to go, where, why he needed the time but how he would always come back.

Always.

If he knew that at any time he could go, as well.

Another swallow, thick, and still no waver in intent. The gun remains pointed steadily at Nigel’s chest, at his heart. Nigel just takes a step forward.

“Aiden -”

Above them, another plane takes off, the rumbling ominous and angry, louder and louder until Aiden closes his eyes, turns his head from it and his finger slips. The shot rings out, too sharp in the air, too loud, though it immediately gets consumed by the white noise of the engine, and Aiden blinks his eyes open. Lips part wider as his jaw slackens, as breath escapes him in a quick gasp.

“Shit.”

The gun had wavered, thankfully hit away from the heart, the lungs, anywhere where it would cause immediate death, but he had hit. Aiden watches, his own heart beating so fast he can hear nothing at all but that metronome, as blood too dark to be a good sign, slips to the alley floor, and Nigel curses loud enough for it to echo before pressing his hand against the wound in his side.

“Aiden, you little shit!”

The gun is gone, quickly, tossed to the back of the alley and Aiden is close again, unable to get to the wound with how hard Nigel holds it, but able to check his pulse, see his face, eyes wide and wild in pain and anger and something else, something that tugs at Aiden and he doesn’t want to think about it.

“Sorry, I’m sorry -”

 

“You’re not fucking sorry, you fucking shot me, fuck!”

Aiden would laugh if the situation wasn’t dire. He had shot him. In a place it would take Nigel a very long time to bleed out and die if he didn’t get any help. An accidentally well-placed aim, a little revenge of his own.

“Not sorry,” Aiden sighs, and he does laugh, a weak and helpless thing, before Nigel snorts and staggers back against the wall, Aiden following by sheer momentum, hands still pressed to the older man’s cheeks.

“I’ll call you an ambulance though -”

“You’re going to drive me the fuck home and fix this shit on your own,” Nigel replies, voice tight, drawn in pain and breathing quicker. Aiden can’t imagine the pain of it, that he had caused it, but there is a pride there, a wild, frightened pride at knowing he had. Had spoken the language Nigel was fluent in, the one where there are no misunderstandings.

“No,” he says, and it’s enough to bring Nigel’s eyes up to him, narrowed and angry, before the expression relaxes to pain instead, “no, Nigel, I’m going to London.”

It’s said so quietly, so honestly, that the older man can’t even bring up an expletive to counter it. He just jerks in pain, adjusts how he holds against his wound before spitting to the ground and jerking his head towards the mouth of the alley.

“Fucking go then.”

A moment, brief, of doubt, hesitation, before Aiden leans in and kisses Nigel again, deep, lips parting lips, teeth scraping tongues, long enough and hard enough that both are breathless when Nigel finally breaks the kiss with a groan of pain, a curse aimed towards the clouds that continue to pour rain over them both.

Aiden swallows, bites his lip, before pushing up, pushing back, and stumbling from the alley towards the airport, bag forgotten, passport and ticket in his back pocket, with his phone. He doesn’t turn to look at Nigel again, but he knows the other man watches till he’s fully gone from view, before attempting to move again.

-=-

By the time the ambulance gets there, vague directions given by a quiet voice, the line breaking up in a public payphone not far from the airport reporting hearing shots, there’s just blood on the ground. No gun, no bag, no Nigel.

And the rain’s stopped.

The area’s searched, people questioned, but beyond a suggestion that maybe it was two men, one tall one short, there is no information that matches at all. Everyone suggests different hair or different race, some say heavy set, others lanky and fragile. The blood is taken up for testing but the chance of finding a match in the system is unlikely - it could have been anyone, foreign, domestic, gone, dead, escaped, unfound.

After a few hours, the area is cleared again, and above them a plane takes off for London.

-=-

How he manages to get there is already beyond him, but Nigel does. Finds a hotel, books himself in, tries not to be too brash with the serving staff when they ask him a series of questions he does not care to answer. He needs to go upstairs, to settle into bed and bleed the fuck out, because there’s little else that he can do, really, with Aiden fucking gone.

The room is comfortable enough, booked for two weeks and paid for. To heal, if he manages, to die if he can, Nigel barely cares beyond the fact that his window faces into a covered courtyard and he can at least die with fresh air against his skin.

For the first night, he just sleeps, fitful and fevered, wound stoppered as much as it can be, with one of Aiden’s shirts from his bag torn up and made into makeshift tourniquets. The second night, Nigel sleeps only because the minibar is emptied, tiny bottles littering the floor, some of the alcohol slicking his skin where he’d poured it to sanitize the still weeping wound.

At least the kid had aimed true, without fucking aiming at all. He had not hit any major organs, had not ruptured the stomach, but he had made sure it would hurt like a bitch till it healed. In a fucked up, twisted, entirely roundabout way, Nigel is very proud of the kid. He wonders if he’s made it to London and if he’ll write again. If he’ll come back because he let him go.

He wonders if he realizes the only way he would have let him go is if he had been dead, if he realizes how fucking hard Nigel pushed for the kid to pull the damned trigger, since he’d felt his gun unholstered on the bus. He probably knows, Aiden’s a smart fucking kid.

Nights flow one into the other for a while, and Nigel wakes only when he hears the music, and only then long enough to listen. Day in and day out he hears the cello, wonders who plays it and what their story is, why they play such an instrument at a hotel, so well, when they could play in an orchestra, to crowds of people and standing ovations.

It doesn’t matter, he supposes, beyond the fact that the music saves his life. Reminds him to eat, to clean the wound, to take a fucking shower.

Until one day he stands long enough to know he can.

Until one day he takes the time to order new clothes, delivery to the front desk with no note as to why.

Until one day he goes downstairs, to the courtyard, and listens to Gabi play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a moment, I took the time, and I am so grateful for anyone still following this story. I'm so sorry. So much happened between my starting it and getting here, to finish it. I started stories with characters so similar that I was losing touch with my inner Nigel, for a long time he went away and Aiden was uncooperative.
> 
> But in the end, I had to finish it, I owed it to them and to YOU all of you amazing readers who have been so patient with me as I worked through some shit.
> 
> I'd had the ending in mind for a long, long time, and what's amusing is I have still not seen Charlie Countryman. So I have no bloody idea if I got it anywhere near right, but heck, my story my rules. Hope it makes even a little sense, hope you guys enjoy it, and thank you, again, all of you, for everything.


End file.
